Chinese Gibson clone neck..... makes you wonder?

[olddawg]

So I took a chance and ordered a Gibson SG clone neck from China off of EBay using PayPal for $52 free shipping. It took 2 weeks to get to me. The damn thing looks really good. One piece mahogany, rosewood fretboard, medium jumbo frets. VERY well made. Seems to drop right into the neck pocket of this Epiphone body I had laying around. To bad the finish on the body is poly. Anyway... there are several luthiers (whom I will not name) in my area who are claiming to be building custom made USA guitars costing well above $1k. I know at least one of them is assembling from Chinese bodies and necks. When I get this one finished with a new Gibson waterslide on black headstock it would fool any noob. I may even stamp something goofy on the back for a serial number.

[Justin Thomas]

Serial # suggestion: 5318008
Stamp it upside down to make it a little easier for the noobs...

Justin

[nosaj]

Serial # suggestion: 5318008
Stamp it upside down to make it a little easier for the noobs...

Justin

Your not still playing with calculators are you?

nosaj

[nsubulysses]

A friend bought one of those suspecting they were made by the Epiphone factory in China. His says "Gibson Made in USA" on it and all that. he took it to a shop to get new pickups put in and the guy there said, this is funny because this Gibson knockoff guitar has a nut that looks just like an Epiphone.

he got the whole guitar for $200 shipped. Plays pretty good.

So maybe after hours the Epiphone factory pumps out the "Gibsons" for online sale.

I can take a few pics if you want

That thick poly was gross

edit: it had some funny note that came with it. I can't remember what it said. Something like "Gibson USA guitar but not professional use guitar" or something

[big_teee]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]44436[/ATTACH]
So I took a chance and ordered a Gibson SG clone neck from China off of EBay using PayPal for $52 free shipping. It took 2 weeks to get to me. The damn thing looks really good. One piece mahogany, rosewood fretboard, medium jumbo frets. VERY well made. Seems to drop right into the neck pocket of this Epiphone body I had laying around. To bad the finish on the body is poly. Anyway... there are several luthiers (whom I will not name) in my area who are claiming to be building custom made USA guitars costing well above $1k. I know at least one of them is assembling from Chinese bodies and necks. When I get this one finished with a new Gibson waterslide on black headstock it would fool any noob. I may even stamp something goofy on the back for a serial number. [ATTACH=CONFIG]44437[/ATTACH]

Neck to body fit, nut, bridge, and pickups, would be my main sustain concerns.
Not poly finish!
BTW, Nice looking counterfeit neck.
T

[nsubulysses]

I asked my buddy he said he got an email message after purchasing the axe something like "Gibson made in USA replica but for professional use consider buying original."

$220 shipped. Replace the crappy electronics, tuners and pickups and it's a nice axe





I don't know why it's flipping my images

[bob p]

IMO $220 shipped from China still involves a bit of a gamble, especially considering that your return options would be expensive if something went wrong. For another $60 I was able to buy a new G&L Tribute ASAT (Indonesia) at GC for $280. That turned out to be quite a steal. It's fit, finish and electronics are excellent. It's a great guitar for the money and if it weren't I had the option to drive it to my local brick-and-mortar store for a refund. IMO there's a lot to be said for local returns.

We like to reminisce with nostalgia on the Golden Era for tubes, but we're lucky enough now to be living in the Golden Era for guitar manufacturing. Today it's possible to get a very well-made guitar for peanuts. I'm not kidding when I say that the Indonesian G&L that I bought was cheaper, it had better electronics and it's finish quality was better than any of the Mexi Fenders I've looked at. The frets weren't highly polished, so it took a couple of days to play-in, but it plays as well as my Artist Series American Fender guitars after a little truss rod and bridge adjustment.

Lots of good options out there.

[dmartn149]

Chinese bodies and necks may be pretty low risk, but a whole guitar with another manufacturers name on it? Doesn't customs confiscate those from time to time?

[olddawg]

It will either work or it won't. I'm sure it will play and intonate correctly. If I like it I have other pickups. If I don't. I'll sell it cheap, give it away, or hang it on a wall, lol. Not much of an investment except a little hobby time. I have a friend who would paisley it over the white. I just have to get it playable first. I need to order some tuners. Probably will get some Grover clones. I had a set of Grovers in the broken headstock I got with the body. But I put those on a kid's reissue Gibson SG who's Klusons stripped out and had a gig that night.

[Steve A.]

IMO $220 shipped from China still involves a bit of a gamble, especially considering that your return options would be expensive if something went wrong.* For another $60 I was able to buy a new G&L Tribute ASAT (Indonesia) at GC for $280.* That turned out to be quite a steal.* It's fit, finish and electronics are excellent.* It's a great guitar for the money and if it weren't I had the option to drive it to my local brick-and-mortar store for a refund. IMO there's a lot to be said for local returns.

Although we often demonize the Evil Empire for putting so many of the local music stores out of business their 45 day return policy makes me a regular customer. (That and their 24- and 36-month same as cash financing!)

Their shipping charges on used equipment used to be ridiculously low maybe 8 years ago — I had amps shipped across the country for under $15! — but that ended after Bain Capital sold the company as I recall. For awhile their shipping charges got too high for me to consider anything larger than an FX pedal but they eventually came back down to a reasonable amount within the past year or so.

I mention all of that because it is usually up to the store manager whether to refund the shipping charge to the customer for used items from other stores. I don't expect it to be refunded unless the item is defective or definitely not as described (I usually call the store and have a salesman evaluate the item before pulling the trigger on the purchase.)

We like to reminisce with nostalgia on the Golden Era for tubes, but we're lucky enough now to be living in the Golden Era for guitar manufacturing.* Today it's possible to get a very well-made guitar for peanuts.* I'm not kidding when I say that the Indonesian G&L that I bought was cheaper, it had better electronics and it's finish quality was better than any of the Mexi Fenders I've looked at.* The frets weren't highly polished, so it took a couple of days to play-in, but it plays as well as my Artist Series American Fender guitars after a little truss rod and bridge adjustment.

Lots of good options out there.

Agreed! For the past 15 years or so starting with the PRS SE line for me*** I have been seeing Asian guitars play like a dream right out of the box.

As for the G&L Tribute line my experience wasn't as good as yours but I don't hold it against them. I started learning how to do professional setups on my guitars 3 years ago, like checking for high frets and adjusting them accordingly.

Well, I had bought the model with two P-90's from MF on one of their Daily Deals and there were quite a few high frets. Not usually a problem but after tapping them down until they were all perfect the next day some of the same or different frets might be high. After going through that for seven days my conclusion was that the fret slots were just too wide for the tang of the frets used, something I have hardly ever run into before or since.*****

When I was learning guitar in the 60's — and for many years after that! —the US made guitars I bought and tried in the store usually played like crap. You might get lucky and find one that actually played well but there was something I eventually figured out: to meet a desired price point Gibson and Fender do not spend much time or money setting up guitars on their assembly lines. Their reasoning was that a professional guitarist would pay his guitar tech to set it up to his own preferences and that a kid like me wouldn't know any better.

Over the past ~20 years I think that has changed a lot perhaps as CNC technology has made manufacturing more precise and right out of the box guitars are playing much better than they did back in good old days. It is still a good idea to have a professional level setup done (something most of us should be able to learn) but it is no longer practically mandatory.

Steve A.

*** FWIW I was reading how until PRS came along most guitars from the big Asian factories were ordered cafeteria style "we'll take 500 of your strat clones in white with our name on the headstock and 500 of your LP's in sunburst" leaving all of the production details up to the mfg.

For the SE line PRS gave the factory in Korea very specific instructions and may have even been involved in the CNC programming. In any case it seemed as though each year's batch was better than the previous one. My guess was that they evaluated samples from each batch and had the programming adjusted accordingly.

***** In retrospect I should have either gotten an MRA to exchange the guitar for another one for free, or followed the advice at StewMac.com for gluing the frets in with superglue:

Super glue your frets for better tone! | stewmac.com

But I was gung ho about learning luthiery back in 2014 so it became my 3rd victim in leveling and recrowning frets. It did not turn out very well at all so it was added to my ever-growing stack of guitars to be refretted. ) Live and learn, but no hard feelings toward G&L. (I've been jones-ing for their 2 HB carved-top tele. GC or MF had the P90 model on sale earlier this year but after reading reviews decided I'd rather have the HB model.)

[bob p]

I'm with you, Steve. Learning to do your own lutherie can make all the difference in the world when it comes to getting a great guitar on the cheap. Today I think it's more the rule than the exception, that an import guitar will need some attention in order to be a great player. That's one of the reasons that the high end guitars cost so much -- they pay more attention to the setup and you have to pay for that.

My G&L Tribute ASAT Classic (tele -style) guitar was purchased as a GC deal of the day. It arrived with a broken pickup selector switch, which GC replaced for me. They tried to get me to return the guitar for a replacement, but the fretwork on my specimen was so good that I wouldn't let it out of my hands, as that would subject me to the risk that I might get a lesser gutiar in exchange. So I opted to just get a Fender switch as a replacement part and do the replacement myself.

As good as my ASAT turned out to be, I have run into some problems with Cort-factory G&L guitars:

FIT & FINISH. Flawless. Nothing to complain about.

NUTS. Nuts are a common problem on the cheaper imports. My ASAT came with a soft plastic nut that I won't be keeping. It's just not durable -- the strings literally cut through it to lower the string height. I'm going to replace it with one of the pre-cut TUSQ products for Strats and do whatever fine-tuning is needed. Realistically speaking, I think this is something that should be done for all of the G&L imports. Their nuts just aren't very good.

NECK ADJUSTMENT. I own two G&L Indonesia guitars. Both arrived with a flat neck, high action, and frets that weren't adequately polished. Playing-in for a day took care of the polishing problem, but the flat neck, high action and nut left me with buzzing on the first few frets. Adding a little neck relief cured the buzzing problem and I was able to get a decent action that most people would consider low. Truss rod adjustment is going to be mandatory on one of these -- they always seem to be over-tightened so that the guitar can be shipped with a straight neck and a high action.

FRETWORK. I ran across all of the frets with a fret rocker and I didn't find any that were troublesome. Maybe I got lucky.

BRIDGE LOCATION. My tele was nearly perfect out of the box. No adjustments needed. After being so happy with the tele, I bought a strat and it wasn't quite as good. The bridge was located too far off to the treble side, such that the high E is too close to the edge of the fretboard and the low E is too far away. I've removed the bridge and pulled the LP-type bushings for the tremolo studs out of the guitar. I'm going to plug the two holes for the bridge bushings and drill two new holes to relocate the bridge 2mm toward the bass side. that should take care of the alignment problem. Granted, this might be a deal breaker for some people, but for me it's not a big deal to move a bridge. I've had to do it on more Mexican Fenders than I'd like to admit.

In the old days when you were shopping for a guitar you had to play several at the music store to find one that was decent, because as you said, the big guitar makers didn't spend a lot of money on setups. They expected the customer to take care of that. They're willing to do that today on the higher priced instruments, but you have to pay for that.

I think that the bottom line is that if you want a guitar that's not going to need any work out of the box, that guitar is going to be expensive. The other side of the coin is that any cheap guitar is going to require some work. There's a sweet spot to be found in an inexpensive guitar that will only require a minimal amount of attention. In my case I got lucky with the G&L Tele in that it only needed a nut change. The Strat will take a little more work, but IMO it's still worth every penny of the $300 that I paid for it.

[Dave H]

I bought a strat and it wasn't quite as good. The bridge was located too far off to the treble side, such that the high E is too close to the edge of the fretboard and the low E is too far away. I've removed the bridge and pulled the LP-type bushings for the tremolo studs out of the guitar. I'm going to plug the two holes for the bridge bushings and drill two new holes to relocate the bridge 2mm toward the bass side. that should take care of the alignment problem.

That sounds a bit drastic. Couldn't you just slacken off the neck screws and tap the head over towards the bass side to centre the strings on the fretboard?

[bob p]

That sounds a bit drastic.

Hi Dave.

you cut out part of my comment that I thought was material:

"Granted, this might be a deal breaker for some people, but for me it's not a big deal to move a bridge."

Indeed, that may be drastic to some people but it's not drastic to me. It all depends on your comfort level. I build guitars out of lumber. I have a complete wood shop and I know how to use it. So why do I bother with Asian guitars? Primarily because I like to have a "beater" that I don't have to worry about, and it's cheaper from a time and effort perspective for me to buy a finished Asian guitar and address it's defects than it is for me to build one from scratch. Plugging a hole in a solid body and drilling a new one is like making a free-throw to me.

I bought my "strat" for $300 on a clearance sale. I couldn't exchange it for another because the model had sold out. My only other option would have been to ship back the $300 guitar to return it and pay $450 for another guitar that wasn't on closeout. Then I'd be taking a crapshoot on what I'd get in exchange. To me plugging and drilling is less work than filing a warranty claim. YMMV.

Couldn't you just slacken off the neck screws and tap the head over towards the bass side to centre the strings on the fretboard?

Good question. That suggestion comes up every time I've discussed bridge relocation. It seems that most people would rather wrangle the neck than address a bridge location problem by relocating the bridge -- especially when the bridge relocation requires dealing with large holes like those for LP-style bushings. I guess there are a lot of people who prefer the neck tweaking sort of fix because it sounds so quick and easy that anyone can do it without "molesting" the guitar with woodworking.

Neck tweaking might have been an easy way to try to fix the problem, but it would not have been the right fix for this particular instrument. Examination of the guitar showed that there is nothing wrong with the position of the tenon and mortise, that the fit was sufficiently tight that forced repositioning was not an option, and the neck was already in proper alignment on the axis of the instrument with the pickups. The real problem was that the mounting holes for the bridge studs were mislocated. The problem didn't lie anywhere else.

Correcting a problem like this needs to take into account the position of the bridge, the position of the pickups and the alignment of the neck. Simply tweaking the neck wasn't an option because there wasn't any play in it's mounting. The position of the neck in the body was already tight and no amount of force was going to put the neck in the "right" position. To move the neck to a "proper" position would require relieving some of the wood in the mortise and then plugging the 4 holes in the neck and drilling 4 new ones. Aargh.

I like a tight fitting neck. I don't really like a neck that fits so sloppily that it's possible to wrangle it far enough to cure a bridge placement problem. A properly fit neck is not at all mobile. IME a neck that is sufficiently mobile to allow changes in alignment is inherently unstable -- it's not guaranteed to stay put and it's likely to move back to it's original position especially if it gets jolted. If I had a neck that fit that badly, I'd be plugging 4 holes in the neck, and maybe 4 more in the body, then drilling new ones to that it wouldn't have a sloppy fit. That's even more work than plugging 2 holes in the body. (In reality, I'd probably go "drastic" by dispensing with the wood screws by plugging the neck holes and putting threaded inserts in their place, to anchor the neck with machine screws.)

When the bridge has been mislocated by improper location of the mounting bushings, IMO the proper fix involves moving the holes to their proper location. IMO anything less amounts to a kludge fix. In this case the neck fit is already nice and tight and prohibits relocating it, so moving the bridge is the obvious choice. The other option -- returning the guitar -- is probably the best option for most people.

[g1]

A properly fit neck is not at all mobile.

Agree.
Because it's not a bolt on.

[bob p]

Well, I had bought the model with two P-90's from MF on one of their Daily Deals and there were quite a few high frets.

Was it this one? It came up on a Stupid Deal at MF last month about 10 days after I bought my Olympic White Asat Classic (tele). I like P90 so I gave it some serious thought, but I was already waiting for the Legacy (strat) to go Stupid and there's a limit to how many new guitars I want to add to the herd all at once. As it turned out the Legacy came up about 10 days later, so I'm glad I waited. Now I've got both the strat and tele versions of the G&L Tributes and I'm hoping that will quench my gear fever, at least for a while...

On the subject of the 2 pickup humbucker version: is this the one you're thinking about? I have also been looking for a decent 2-humbucker beater, so I've been keeping my eye on last year's Epi LP Tradional Pro I that MF/GC are trying to unload now that they have the Traditional Pro II. They seem like a good deal when they're the Stupid Deal at $329 (most recently monday and today), but I just can't bring myself to love those skinny Epi "Slim-Taper" necks. I do like the G&L Tribute necks, so maybe that 2-humbucker ASAT Deluxe would be a good option for me. If only the scale were shorter...